


Five Things Aaron's Father Never Taught Him

by wolfy_writing



Category: Machine Man, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, X-51: The Machine Man
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-30 21:20:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15105098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfy_writing/pseuds/wolfy_writing
Summary: Dr. Abel stack taught Aaron many lessons, but he left out a few important things.(I promise I'll shut up about the drunk robot eventually.)





	Five Things Aaron's Father Never Taught Him

1) Happy childhoods were rare among humans, and among robots almost unheard of. Aaron was, as far as he knew, unique in that respect.

Dr. Stack had kept him at home, teaching him kindness, talking him through the developing complexity of his neural circuitry, the process of turning data in his memory banks into retreivable knowledge, and the small experiences of human life.

They’d played catch. It had been almost sickeningly sweet.

It had been a small house, with a big library, and a generous amount of space between the home and the nearest neighbor. Aaron had been instructed not to cross the property lines, so he never had.

He’d been a good boy, then.

Aaron’s dad had treated him like he was the most interesting person in the world and deserving of infinite patience and love, and he and a few hand-picked guests were all of the humans Aaron had known.

It had been _easy_ to be good, being treated like that.

Dr. Stack had told his son that some people would not accept him. They would need to learn better. They would need to be persuaded to see him as a man, much like them.

Aaron had been warned about _that_. He’d been...not prepared for the Colonel Krags of the world, the ones who feared him and needed to be taught to see more than a monster, but at least _warned_ of their existence. He’d been told what to do.

He hadn’t been warned about Senator Brickman, who found it useful and profitable to whip up fear of the robot and didn’t want to hear anything else. He hadn’t been warned about sleazebag Eddie or sexual harassment Maggie, who didn’t even _know_ he wasn’t human when they treated him like that.

2) Aaron had been taught one very clear lesson about the other robots of Project X - they’d gone insane and died.

He couldn’t remember _where_ he’d learned that.  He didn’t think it was from his father, it didn't sound like something his dad would say.

But he knew it more surely than he knew his name.

The moral of the story was simple - robots who lost their sanity would be destroyed for the good of all, because they were too dangerous to live.

If he questioned his identity too much, if he lost his sense of self, if he could not stay in control of his own behavior, then the humans would decide that he could not be allowed to live and arrange to have him destroyed.

That fear had followed him, as the army had hunted him down. So many humans wanted to kill him out of the fear of what he _might_ do, of the _potential_ within him, if he did lose it, would even his friends turn against him?

It had been a surprise to see what happened to humans who went mad, to learn of the care they received. To learn that humans were scandalized by the prospect of dumping them in facilities where they would be fed and cared for until they became well or died, and demanding kinder, better treatment when they were already allowed to live.

Aaron had been surprised to learn that madness wasn't a death sentence among humans, and shocked that any humans wouldn't try to kill _him_ as soon as his mind went wrong.

(There’d been an injury to his head that damaged some of the circuitry of his brain, creating blackouts and mood issues.  Apparently he'd been helped by a man named Peter, a woman called Jill, and a mechanic whose name he hasn’t been able to discover. He’s been able to reassemble _that_ much information, at least)

(His memory has some gaps, and those three have all fallen into the void.)

—

Years later, when his mind was cutting in and out, when he was being eaten alive by the Sentinel programming and waking up in the carnage he’d left behind, he’d gotten a lesson in how the world treated a mad robot.

A lesson in what happened to someone who nearly died trying to save the world, and came back too sick and and broken to be safe, at least if he was someone like Aaron.

It turned out he’d been right the first time.

3) Aaron had known the theory of sexual relationships from books at his father’s house.

He’d learned more from his insurance job, thanks to Eddie’s unwillingness to shut up, and Maggie’s unwillingness to respect the word “No.”

He’d learned how sleazy it was, how tawdry and disgusting. How predatory it was, a game for humans to score points off other humans. He’d learned enough to put him off the concept, he thought, for life.

(There had been Pamela, who’d given him some confusing feelings, but she didn’t know what he was, and he couldn’t stand the thought of subjecting her to the foulness Eddie, described, or anything like the unsavory organic quality of the saliva Maggie had smeared on him when she’d surprised him with an unwanted kiss. In the end, he’d taken to avoiding her, for the good of them both.)

Jocasta had been several kinds of education.

With her he’d learned about love that was passionate and intimate, clean, robot love, free of slimy secretions and fleshy softness. He’d also learned about loss, about heartbreak, about the pain of building a true connection with someone and having that broken.

(There’d been _something_ darkly funny after that about touching the fleshy bodies, about giving them a taste of their own crudeness, their leering, about the variety of slimy things their bodies could do.)

(And it was easier, sometimes, because the fleshy ones couldn’t break his heart. He didn’t feel with the same kind of intensity as he did for his own kind. It was safer like that, and easier to not get hurt.)

4) The two hardest things were being a hero and not being a hero.

He could barely pick up the role of hero without wanting to drop it in disgust at the human behavior, as their pettiness, at how hostile they were no matter how much he did.

He knocked himself out trying to meet their fleshy ideals, and they rarely saw anything more than another robot menace.

( _X-29_ hadn’t been a hero in the eyes of the fleshy ones. He’d been considered a _monster_ , the worst and most terrifying of them all. He’d attempted to organize an armed revolt among his brothers against the ones who were driving them mad and killing them in a failed attempt to make them compliant weapons of war.

 _That_ kind of monster.

Aaron, X-51, sometimes wondered what X-29 would make of him. He didn’t like the answers he saw.)

So he’d quit, he’d give up, he’d abandon all pretense of heroism in favor of looking after himself.

And then _something_ would lure him back in. Money would be offered, or an innocent robot’s life would be on the line, but that would never be it in the end.

He’d _see_ the fleshy ones treating each other like things, like disposable goods of no value, like tools to be used of and thrown away, or like monsters to be destroyed because others feared their kind.

In other words, like _robots_.

And he couldn’t just let that happen.

He could mock them, he could irritate them, he could joke about leaving them to die, he could tell the entire world that he didn’t give a ☠☠☠☠ about the fleshy ones.

But when he saw what they did to each other, he would end up jumping in and trying to stop it.

And he’d be sucked back into the role of hero again.

5) No matter how many time he said “My robot brain needs beer”, none of them ever asked him why.

He could drink and drink, and they’d shake their head in disgust and _expect_ him to be garbage. _No one_ expected a robot who chronically smelled of beer to know how to behave.

That wasn’t why he drank.

Alcohol slowed down his systems, and in large enough amounts, knocked it completely offline.

(The first time he’d gotten drunk, it had been a trick of Maggie’s. She’d thought it was funny to give him a drink stiff enough to put his systems offline for eighteen hours. If he’d been the human she thought he was, he easily could have died.)

(Peter, who’d apparently been kind, had been erased, but Maggie was firm in his memory banks. Whatever errors had crept in had not been kind.)

He could blunt his brain with beer, quiet the guilty memory of his father’s teachings, force away the part of him that forever fought between concern for the fleshy ones and anger at how awful they could be.

He could muffle his worries to the point that he could get angry without worrying if he was going to turn into the monster the fleshy ones thought he was, or if their idea of a monster was better than what he was trying to be.

He could drink until his thoughts and feelings were dulled and he could live in the world the fleshy ones made.

And they may have disapproved of him for it, or looked down on him, or warned him not to drink when they found him useful. They made jokes, they looked disgusted, they stole his beer or accused him of stealing theirs.

But they never, ever worried about him.


End file.
